Scheduled report in BI Publisher 12c returns garbled excel output

Question

Hi everyone,

I'm using Oracle BI Publisher version 12c and recently I notice a strange error: when I schedule some reports that use excel templates (.xls), their output can not be opened without the error message "The file format and extension of <report_name> don't match. The file could be corrupted or unsafe. Unless you trust its source, don't open it. Do you want to open it anyway?"

If I click Yes, the file is opened but the texts (supposed to be Vietnamese) are all messed up with strange characters and can not be read. Although the XML data generated by the jobs in Report job history are always in the the good condition.

I have tried these approaches:

1. Schedule with bursting definition and specify: 'EXCEL' AS OUTPUT_FORMAT

→ The output is still broken

2. Schedule with Email as the destination

→ The output in the report job history is broken, while the output sent through email is normal

3.  Schedule a rtf template to output a .xlsx file

→ The output is normal but it's not viable in my case, since my report has an excel template containing 80 columns

4. Run the report online

→ The output is normal, but for "heavy" reports, I will have to wait 10-20 minutes

Does anyone know what might have caught this error and how do I fix/prevent it?

Ngoc Phung · Answer

This report actually has 2 tabs: the first one is a rtf template built on Word with 30 columns, the second one, which I'm trying to schedule, is an Excel template (built on Excel of course) with 80 columns. The first tab can be scheduled on HTML and *.xlsx and I can open the output. It seems rtf template still works, but the second tab has 80 columns so there is no way I can make a rtf template for it. Anyway, I tried downloading the template and saved it as Excel 97–2003 Workbook (*.xls) as you suggested (it was already *.xls when I downloaded), then uploaded it back to the report but the error still persists.

Mallikarjuna Kuppauru-Oracle · Answer

Yes—but only if the template was uploaded/saved in an unsupported or misleading format. Quick validation: * Download the template from BI Publisher. * Open it in Excel and use Save As. * It should identify as Excel 97–2003 Workbook (*.xls), not .xlsx. * Re-save it as real .xls, re-upload it as layout type Excel, and schedule using Excel (*.xls). as per screenshot - The Excel template itself looks correctly configured: it is type excel, only allows Excel (*.xls), and its default format is also Excel (*.xls). The suspicious part is the row above it: the RTF layout is marked “Default Layout”, while the Excel layout is not. So, if the scheduled job does not explicitly select the Excel layout, BI Publisher may render using the default RTF layout (whose default format is HTML) rather than the Excel template. Regards, Arjun

Ngoc Phung · Answer

Hi,

Before I schedule the reports, I always make sure to choose the Excel (*.xls) as output format since my template is Excel. Even when I do that, the scheduled output is still messed up.

My BIP supports up to 3 different format if the template's Type is excel (though the scheduled CSV output only returns what seems to be the XML data, as I have mentioned).

Do you think that a mismatch between the Excel version of the template file and the version that BIP 12c supports can cause this error?